Facebook Taps Brazilian Favela In Search For Advertising Revenue

Facebook Taps Brazilian Favela In Search For Advertising Revenue

The initiative is initially intended as a pilot for other low income communities on the outskirts of Brazil’s business hub, and it will also include training in management skills, computing and marketing for the favela entrepreneurs.

It also marks Facebook’s entrance into a market that is already worth some $21.4 billion a year, according to a study by consulting firm Data Popular. With a population of about 12 million people, favelas in Brazil form a niche market still underexplored by major Brazilian companies, in spite of its residents being mostly members of the ‘Classe C,’ the country’s burgeoning lower-middle class.

Brazil is one of the world’s six biggest players in the information technology and communications markets, according to research released in January by the International Data Corporation, which projected 5% growth for the segments this year to reach total revenues of $165.6 billion. It is less than the 8% growht registered last year, but still a good number considering that Brazil’s economy as a whole is expected to remain flat amid a series of tax increases and spending cuts.

Facebook is popular in Brazil, with 107.7 million users — 89 million of whom are active monthly and 59 million are active daily. That makes it the company’s largest market outside the U.S. Brazil has the the world’s fourth-largest smartphone market, and 87.4% of Brazil’s internet users visited social networking sites in January, spending an average of 628 minutes each on the sites, or almost twice the amount of time spent by American users that same month, according to research firm comScore.

In Helipolis, about 90% of the 200,000 residents have a profile on Facebook, but only about 14% of its 5,000 small businesses have a page on the social network so far, Hruby told the AFP.